Socio-economic outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic for Ukraine

The article presents a comprehensive analysis of the causes and consequences of both human and socio-economic losses incurred by Ukraine as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions introduced by the government in order to prevent its spread. The author's attention is primarily focused on exploring the population's social well-being, as well as examining changes in the quality of Ukrainians' lives during the pandemic. The study of the above-mentioned issues is complemented by a sociological inquiry into public views on the coronavirus problem, efficacy of the authorities' actions aimed at combating the pandemic, as well as the essence and real effectiveness of socio-economic policy pursued by the Ukrainian government in present-day conditions. Drawing upon a systemic analysis, the author argues that the ongoing socio-economic crisis in Ukraine, along with vaccine crunch, stems mainly from neoliberal policies implemented by the national government over the past three decades. The article argues the thesis about the transformation of the crisis of confidence, which has been fixed for a long time in Ukraine, into a crisis of vaccination, which today threatens with large humanitarian, economic and geopolitical losses. The research findings allow concluding that the COVID-19 pandemic acted as another trigger for the crisis, thereby intensifying and exacerbating the problems that had already existed in the national economy. The author's arguments are bolstered by a vast array of domestic and foreign statistical data, along with the results of surveys conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (1994–2020), «Research & Branding Group» (2020–2021), as well as other Ukrainian sociological centers.

Consciousness and Unconsciousness

Contemporary sociological theory frequently prioritizes that which is consciously known over thoughts, feelings and motivations that are beyond conscious awareness. Consciousness, being immediately measurable, resonates with the still often positivistic orientation of mainstream sociology. Unconsciousness, by contrast, is messy, resisting apprehension through conventional methodological approaches. Whereas many scholars have responded to this inscrutability by dismissing the importance and even the very existence of unconscious processes, this chapter seeks to highlight the significance of both consciousness and unconsciousness for the study of social life. We begin by illuminating how such pivotal sociological thinkers as Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Bourdieu have implicitly grappled with the unconscious mind. From there, we turn to a brief history of more explicit theorizations of unconsciousness, tracing the ideas of core psychoanalytic thinkers like Freud, Jung and Lacan alongside more socio-psychoanalytic theorists like Fromm and Fanon. Finally, we demonstrate the ongoing relevance of unconsciousness to sociological inquiry by highlighting contemporary theorists who have used the unconscious to account for social problems from racial domination to interpersonal violence. Ultimately, we call upon sociological theorists and empirical researchers to adopt a more multidimensional approach when analyzing the multiple dimensions of social reality.

From Value to Valuation: Pragmatist and Hermeneutic Orientations for Assessing Science on the International Space Station

Based on a study of the International Space Station (ISS), this paper argues that – as a set of orientations for sociological inquiry – pragmatism and hermeneutics are confluent frameworks to examine valuation as a social process. This confluence is grounded on their common attunement to valuing as a problematic and relational process, their equally common updates with theories of institutions, and a further conceptual development regarding the temporalities of valuation. I advance the argument in four steps. First, looking at how the question about the “scientific value” of the ISS is far from settled, I show how valuation is always about something considered problematic and indeterminate. Second, characterizing the ISS at the intersection of different criteria of assessment, I stress the nature of valuation as a fundamentally perspectival and interpretive process, and show how a hermeneutic approach can complement some of the limitations of pragmatism in this regard. Third, I look at the question of institutions considering how some modes of assessment sediment more successfully than others. Fourth, I argue that, while providing insights towards it, pragmatist and hermeneutic approaches to valuation have not fully grasped its temporal nature as a process, and outline ways to open this line of inquiry. I conclude with some ideas for studies in sociology of science to re-entangle detailed case studies of scientific practice with the study of how institutions make claims of worth about the nature of science, I propose ways to extend these arguments to other studies of what I call iridescent institutions, and I make some considerations about our stance as sociologists in these valuation disputes.

Case Studies of School Desegregation and Resegregation: How Can We Pursue External Validity?

Case studies form a vital part of sociological inquiry. Despite their important strengths, they often fail to pursue issues of external validity or replication, an important direction for social science generally. In this article, I begin with the premise that at least some case studies can and should contribute to a growing body of research within sociology aimed at replication and promoting external validity. I first discuss how qualitative case studies have handled issues of external validity in the past. Then I outline three dimensions of external validity that are particularly relevant for sociological research: the degree to which qualitative case study findings generalize or replicate to: (1) a larger population, (2) across social contexts, and (3) over time. I set my overall arguments within the larger literature of case studies in sociology but focus specifically on case studies dealing with school desegregation and resegregation. I show the current challenges in pursuing external validity using a set of case studies investigating school desegregation and resegregation in the United States. I argue that quantitative methods can assist in providing evidence regarding the generalizability of individual case studies. I conclude by noting the limitations to such an approach, which signal some of the challenges our discipline faces when pursuing the external validity of case studies.

Have Schemas been Good to Think With?

Schemas are one of the most popular explanatory concepts in cultural sociology, and are increasingly used in sociology more broadly. In this article we ask the question: have schemas been good to think with? We answer this question by analyzing the ontological, epistemic, and methodological bases of schemas, including the conceptualizations, claims, assumptions, and methods that underpin the use of schemas in sociological inquiry. We show that sociologists have developed two distinct, contradictory, and often conflated perspectives on schemas, what we refer to as culturalist and cognitivist perspectives. We suggest that schemas have acquired a polysemic character in sociology, and that they have become a (more narrow and consequently more scientifically legitimate) proxy for Culture, and that these features have (paradoxically) facilitated the popularity of schemas within the discipline. Sociologists have recently begun to make the necessary advancements to turn schemas into a more useful explanatory concept, through both analytical improvements (by distinguishing schemas from both public culture and other forms of nondeclarative personal culture), and methodological innovations (for better deriving schemas from survey data, texts, and experiments). Yet, some challenges remain, and the analytical value of schemas remains promissory. We conclude by offering some guidelines for making more specific and measured claims about schemas in sociological research.

Explaining power and authority in international courts

It has recently been suggested that the study of international legal life should take an ‘empirical turn’: a turn which has often focused on how patterns of authority emerge and operate in relation to international courts. In what follows it is argued that this empiricism fails to distinguish (for the purposes of sociological inquiry) authority from various other concepts such as power or consensus in the study of international law and courts. This is because this method focuses only on overt signs, such as observable action or statements of intention, and at the level of the sign these concepts are not obviously distinguishable. However, one solution to this problem, which is to collapse socially significant and distinct categories such as authority and consensus into a broad category of ‘power’, requires the adoption of an implausible and inconsistent view of agency in explanations of legal authority. By contrast, and in line with the long-standing interpretivist tradition in sociological and legal method, we claim that in order to interpret the observable signs of compliance to international legal rules and principles as indicative of authority, consensus, or power, it is necessary to interpolate an account of the reasons which give rise to the compliance we observe. This, in turn, explains why international legal doctrine, as an axiological structure, gives rise to the behaviour of its addressees, such as state officials.

The Dynamics of Time and Space in Sociological Theory

To date, there has been much emphasis on, and critical inquiry into, the variety of ways sociological theories examine social life, social organization, and human conduct within and between the past and present time horizons. Under the auspice that no authentic anticipation of what we may 'have to be' (future) is possible without borrowing from the resources of what we already 'have been' (past) and 'currently are' (present), sociological inquiry has been primarily focused on the relationship of an experiencing person (or persons) within the complexities of past events and present circumstances as a means to reveal insights toward the future of social organization. The reasons for this focus on investigations into past and present time horizons are because they are facilitated by the presence of an observable and material reality consisting of identifiable documents and tangible objects that can be identified, observed, interpreted and measured. Whereas, investigations into the future are working within a different reality status all together, one that does not contain identifiable material and empirically accessible facts, thus making it much more difficult to study in that it is focused on a reality that does not yet exist. Given that only materialized processes of the past and present have the status of factual reality (what is real is observable), conclusions and predictions about future events, which are essentially beyond the realm of the material and observable, remain at the level of the senses, as an aspect of the mind, and are seen as belonging to the realm of the 'ideal' and the 'not the real'. This paper walks through these considerations in detail and examines how a focus on time and space can help us better understand the ways in which social beings act.

‘Save the children!’: Governing left-behind children through family in China’s Great Migration

Existing scholarship on the lives and wellbeing of China’s left-behind children often frames the issues as a function of their parents’ migration, which leaves a significant gap in discussing the role of the state in shaping the institutional framework that these families operate within, cope or struggle with. Through critically interrogating public discourses based on articles from a mainstream newspaper and policy documents since the early 2000s, this article situates a sociological inquiry into the discursive and institutional framework addressing ‘the left-behind children problem’ in China within the problematic of the relationship between children, family, and the state. The analysis reveals seemingly ‘disingenuous’ articulations of left-behind children’s value in the mainstream media and official policies. On the one hand, there seems to be a prevailing concern over the welfare of left-behind children which has grave implications for the country’s future development. On the other hand, the dominant discourse attributes left-behind children’s ‘miserable’ plight to their ‘pathological’ family life, which translates into policy efforts to discipline rural migrant families according to a family ideology rooted in urban middle-class experiences. I argue that such inconsistencies should be contextualized in the state’s neoliberal-authoritarian governance of the migrant population in the post-reform era, which perpetuates a stereotype of ‘the pathological family’ to account for left-behind children’s disadvantages while evading, hence up until recent years avoiding to redress, the political-economic factors underlying their plight. I conclude the article by ruminating on the theoretical, social and policy implications of this study.

Administrative decision-making on the frontline

This chapter explores decision-making at the frontline of public administration. It begins by asking what might be meant by ‘the frontline’, who frontline decision-makers are, and why they are worthy of study. It proceeds to identify the contribution of administrative justice scholarship to initial decision-making before sketching wider disciplinary engagement with frontline administration and the research methods adopted. With this platform in place, the chapter adopts the micro-, meso-, and macro- levels of sociological inquiry to structure the analysis of various factors that influence decision-making on the frontline. This main section of the chapter reviews empirical studies of administrative agencies, from tax inspectors and welfare-to-work officials to reviewers of criminal appeals and police officers. The chapter concludes by reflecting on what administrative justice’s particular analytical focus and scholarly preoccupations might yet offer the study of frontline decision-making, drawing attention to juridification, agency statutory interpretation, and ethical duties.